RTE news tonight is running a segment about the record numbers of U.S. citizens applying to become Irish citizens this year.

If you are a descendant of someone born in Ireland who moved abroad, you are eligible to claim Irish Citizenship, and then apply for an Irish Passport.

‘Descendant’ includes as far back as great-great grandparent in some cases, but always includes a parent or grandparent who was Irish.

Éire (Ireland) became a separate sovereign state in 1922, so if your grandparent was born anywhere on the island of Ireland before 1922, they would have been British, and Irish, in the same way that the Welsh, the Scots and the English are all British today.

Northern Ireland still belongs to Britain. But anyone from Northern Ireland is automatically eligible to become an Irish Citizen.

The first step

The first step is to register yourself in the Foreign Birth Register. In 2024, there were 11,601 Foreign Birth registrations from the U.S., up by 50% on the previous year.

Once you register, you can apply for an Irish Passport. There were 31,825 Irish passport applications in 2024 from the U.S., up by 10%. Overall, there were over a million applications for Irish passports.

You are allowed to hold dual citizenship both in the U S and in Ireland. (Let’s hope Trump doesn’t revoke that!)

Once you hold an Irish passport, you hold a ticket to live and work anywhere in the EU as an Irish Citizen. NB. since Brexit, the EU does not include Britain.

Last November saw the highest number of U S applications for an Irish Passport in a calendar month ever: 3,692.

We in Ireland are watching, aghast anew every day at what Trump and Musk are getting up to. We were waiting for the USA to come to its senses, for Trump to be impeached, imprisoned, banned from running, stopped.

It must be a nightmare if you live there, because his track record shows he will get away with his destruction of the US constitution and justice system.

So if you are thinking of getting out while you still can, you have our utmost sympathy.

If you actually want to live in Ireland, as opposed to somewhere else in the EU, there are maybe some things you’d like to know.

There is a terrible housing shortage here. Particularly in Dublin, and the other big university cities like Cork, Limerick and Galway. It is a huge crisis. Students can’t even find rental accommodation, they often have to commute for four hours every day from their parents’ house. Even if you have the money to buy a house, there just aren’t any on the market, and rentals are exorbitant and like gold dust.

While there are pockets of exclusively Irish-speaking areas, everybody can speak English.

A Euro is worth around a dollar. Today 1 Euro = $1.03.

Ireland was recently hit by the worst two storms since records began. The infrastructure was badly hit, and a month later many people are still without electricity, and some without water, as the water treatment plants rely on electricity.

It rains a lot. In the west of Ireland we have palm trees, and rarely get a frost. We are on the Gulf Stream, but this winter we did get a fortnight of freezing temperatures. The Gulf Stream is weakening, so Ireland in 2050 might well be more like Iceland in temperature.

The heat waves that the rest of Europe has been seeing? Yeah, no, Ireland hasn’t.

We haven’t had a summer for ten years, so we are overdue and I have high hopes that this year we will get one. That is: at least 7 sunny days in a row when the temperature is over 65 degrees Fahrenheit. (We use Celsius here, but I’m 65 so I still think in Fahrenheit. 50 Fahrenheit equals 10 Celsius, 61 F = 16 C, and 82 F = 28 C). It’s common that July sees daytime temperatures of 11 Celsius.

If you are a gardener, we get plenty of rain, and even more plenty of snails. Be prepared to slug-hunt three times a night if you want to grow anything to fruition. Or make a frog pond and protect it from the crows, gulls and cats. Frogs are great slug-eaters. But by law you may only be given frog spawn by a school teacher.

Also of note is that the cost of living in Ireland is the second highest in the EU. Water is still free, but you will need a sponsor to create an electricity account, if you do manage to find a place to live.